New Google Search Update Could Hurt Small Business Websites

With the new Google search update, small business websites may need to evaluate their online content strategy.

After launching “Panda” an update to Google’s search algorithm that gives higher priority on high quality content, the search authority has again announced a new update aimed at providing searchers with the freshest results.

The announcement of this big change came via Google’s blog post explaining that with the incredibly rapid pace at which information moves in today, “the algorithm needs to be able to track if a result from a week ago about a TV show is new, or a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.” This new Google search update will likely affect as much as 35% of all searches and the Panda update was said to affect 12% of searches.

Google said that the new update will specifically affect searches for recent events or “hot topics”, events that are regularly occurring and searches for information that changes often but not necessarily a recurring event or trending topic. In other words, the change is designed to determine the level of freshness needed for each query and ultimately provide fresher results accordingly.

Matt McGee, executive news editor at SEO-focused news site Search Engine Land said that, “It looks like businesses in other industries, with small, rarely-updated website will find it more difficult to get visibility and it could be the biggest impact on small business websites.” He added that businesses in an industry where things change on a regular basis and websites that are never updated will tend to have a slimmer chance of being searchable on most queries.

McGee recommends that frequently updating a business blog with short informative posts on industry news or on your new product or service are essentially effective ways for small businesses to update their website. Blogs proved as great SEO weapons and the Google’s new change seems to give emphasis on the impact of providing quality content on a frequent basis. Even if you’re business is still at its “embryonic” stage, you can keep up with the change as these ways are pretty easy which require little or no investment at all.

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